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Salons. Un éclairage sur la société par les revues savantes.

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The interconnection between the sporting and political realms, despite allusions
from elements within the sport industry that these two worlds do not and should never
intermingle, is so obvious as to be unmistakable While sport may not quite be “war minus
the shooting,” as George Orwell so pithily remarked, it is a highly malleable symbol that
can be mobilized for any number of political ends. From Spain to South Africa, sport has
been among the most visible foci of identity politics. Indeed, something about sport’s
symbolism makes it particularly useful in the construction, articulation, and
dissemination of nationalisms and national identities. Sport and the nation are so
intimately connected that sports sociologist Alan Bairner, taking his cues from Scottish
political scientist James Kellas, pointed out that sport is the most common popular form
of nationalist expression in most countries. [1]

This holds as true for Québec as for elsewhere, especially with respect to hockey.
French Canadians, according to sports sociologist Jean Harvey, “took up hockey and made it
a symbol of their national identity, of their fight for the survival of their culture, on
an English speaking continent and within a continent dominated by English.” [2] Historically, the preferred vehicles for these impulses have
been the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Montréal Canadiens and the club’s players such as
the right winger-cum-folk hero Maurice “Rocket” Richard, whose suspension in 1955
triggered a riot in downtown Montréal that was interpreted as a nationalist uprising both
at the time and ex post facto. As a result, much
of the academic work devoted to Québec sport, and almost all of that concerned with
professional hockey, has concentrated on the Canadiens and their socio-political
importance. However, the Québec in which the Canadiens gained prominence was drastically
different to the Québec of the late 1970s and 80s, when the Québec City-based Nordiques
appeared on the hockey landscape and challenged the Canadiens’ provincial hegemony. As
Steve Lasorsa argues in La rivalité
Canadien-Nordiques, an adaptation of his master’s thesis in history at
Université Laval and the first book-length academic treatment of the Nordiques-Canadiens
rivalry, the on-ice competition between the Canadiens and Nordiques was intimately
connected to Québec’s bitter national struggles of the 1980s.

Lasorsa’s thesis is very clearly laid out. He postulates that the intense and
polarizing rivalry between the Canadiens and Nordiques mirrored the political conflict of
the province after the 1980 referendum on sovereignty-association, as Québécois
nationalism coalesced around pro- and anti-independence camps. The Canadiens and
Nordiques, by virtue of the passion channelled to them by Québécois fans and the social
importance of hockey in Québec, served as a vehicle for national debates, in effect
absorbing and reflecting the province’s socio-political polarization. In this sense,
Canadiens-Nordiques games became a site for the dramatization and ritual showcasing of
Québec’s deep schisms.

Lasorsa provides plenty of examples attesting to these divisions: the intense and
often violent games between the Canadiens and Nordiques; the frenzied media coverage of
the rivalry, which assumed and furthered a Manichean distinction between the two teams,
compelling fans to choose one side or the other, and, most interestingly, the corporate
rivalry between the Canadiens’ and Nordiques’ beer-brewing bosses, Molson and Carling
O’Keefe, who used their hockey properties as vehicles to boost their sales in Québec’s
intensely competitive beer market. Lasorsa does indeed prove that there was a polarization, but fails to demonstrate that it was
the polarization referenced in his thesis. While
the rivalry between the Canadiens and Nordiques was, by all accounts, one of the more
intense and colourful in NHL history, it was by no means unprecedented: it was not the
first sporting rivalry, and will not be the last, characterized by robust play, passionate
fans, an irrepressible news media, and corporate antagonism.

In other words, Lasorsa ultimately fails to provide a smoking gun linking the
Canadiens and Nordiques to larger social and political debates in Québec society. This is
due in large part to the author’s limiting his primary research to the 1983-84 season and
its notorious culmination, a fistic confrontation between the two teams in the 1984
Stanley Cup playoffs. While the “Good Friday brawl” undoubtedly drips with symbolism, an
analysis of the newspaper coverage of preceding NHL campaigns would have unearthed
controversies speaking directly to that era’s most significant socio-political debates:
the Nordiques’ adoption of a language policy eliminating English from public announcements
at their home arena, and the Canadiens’ ensuing decision to stay the course with
bilingualism (1980); media scrutiny of the teams’ ethno-linguistic composition, both on
the ice and at management level (1979-1982); allegations by former Nordiques players that
the team actively discriminated against Anglophones (1979-1980); the Canadiens’ ill-fated
hiring of Bob Berry as head coach, despite an almost universal desire, on the part of the
French media, for a Francophone (1981); and the Canadiens’ purge of their front office,
interpreted by the French sports media as a much needed francization of the club’s
management structure (1982-83).

Similar evidentiary deficiencies afflict all parts of the book, including the most
accomplished chapters. For instance, in a fascinating argument, Lasorsa hypothesizes that
the enmity directed against the Canadiens (and, conversely, the popular support afforded
to the Nordiques) can be read as a popular protest by Francophones against Molson,
Québec’s most successful brewery. But the only evidence provided to substantiate this
claim is a short-lived boycott of Molson beer organized by hockey fans in 1979, before the
Nordiques even entered the NHL. Lasorsa does not provide examples of anti-Molson discourse
from the province’s newspapers; similarly absent are statistics showing a Molson’s decline
in Québec during the 1980s. Lasorsa overplays his hand by assuming a province divided
neatly between two teams and two breweries, ignoring the fact that Labatt, a company with
no relationship with either the Canadiens or Nordiques, had significant operations in the
province and an important share of its beer market.

Such oversimplifications are doubly disappointing because Lasorsa asks the right
questions throughout his book. What makes sport such an ideal vehicle for political
symbolism? What are the repercussions of this for the wider society? How are the media and
corporations involved in such processes? These are the questions that have marked the best
academic analyses of the intersection of sport, nationalism, and national identity; that
Lasorsa fails to answer any of them satisfactorily should not detract from his
achievement. As a Master’s thesis, La rivalité
Canadien-Nordiques is very good. As a book it is a well-written, fast-paced,
enjoyable first foray into a very rich topic. Researchers examining the Canadien-Nordiques
rivalry in the future will have a solid base upon which to build.

Parties annexes

Footnotes

[1] Alan Bairner, Sport Nationalism, and Globalization: European and North American
Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001): 17